


a whisper

by ncfan



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords
Genre: Decay, Gen, Korriban, Psychological Horror, Trauma, Triggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-05
Updated: 2015-10-05
Packaged: 2018-04-25 02:10:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4942669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ncfan/pseuds/ncfan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The call of Korriban is strong, but it is the call of the dead."</p>
            </blockquote>





	a whisper

_“The call of Korriban is strong, but it is the call of the dead_.”

There’s been a shadow at the corner of your eye since landing, a whisper at your ear since the first arid blast of sand-choked wind against your face. Whenever you try to focus on it, it darts away from you, like sand from an hourglass slipping through your fingers (The metaphor loses its appeal around the fifth time the wind drives sand into your eyes, and you stop and curse and scrub at your eyes to no avail). You don’t know it for what it is, not at first. This isn’t like Dxun—you knew that the nagging feeling at the back of your mind was there. It never leaves you, though, and you learn quickly to be wary of it.

The Sith Academy is just what you expected it to be, and yet more innocuous by far. The shadowy halls blur together with the enclave on Dantooine, the Temple on Coruscant, until you turn a corner and expect to see old friends, teachers, students, think to see their eyes peering at you from crumbling doorways. But that’s not right, is it? Everyone you’re thinking of is dead. That can’t be right. It can’t be right…

(And yet every stray sound still turns into a voice for you.)

It is utterly dark here, with only your lightsaber and the sparks of the flare Atton holds aloft behind you for light. You find bones here, bones chewed and gnawed until you couldn’t tell what they belonged to if you tried. (You used to find splinters of bones on the battlefield and you wonder what sort of hilt, blade, ornament, _trophy_ the Mandalorians made from them until memory reminds you that the Mandalorians never walked among the ruins of Korriban.) Lightsaber crystals glitter incandescent and cold in the stitching of tattered robes. In the dark, every broken pillar, every computer terminal, every upturned chair and table becomes an attacker waiting to strike. The still air takes every footstep and ragged breath until the echoes become artillery fire and screams.

Silence? There is no silence here.

You stumble about that dark place for days, tripping down dark hallways and huddling against walls with your hands cupped around your mouth. Hallway to hallway, floor to floor, and nothing to show for it except dry bones and the scavenged wreckage of their spent lives. You return to the ship at night and all the old dreams that had frayed and worn after ten years in the Unknown Regions are new again, the commingled odor of smoke and blood and fuel exhaust heavy over them.

You keep to your fruitless searching, nodding greeting to every shadow that pops up from the gloom while your companions stare at you and whisper to themselves. You walk with too many shadows attached to your feet, talk with too many voices issuing from your mouth. There was a time when this was all you knew, but for the life of you, you can’t remember when that was.

Finally, you find Master Vash rotting in a cage whose bars are stained scarlet with her blood. The worms have claimed her for their own and when you stare into her sightless white eyes everything becomes clear at last.

It’s all here. Everything is here.

Green worlds go ashen and your mouth is full of blood as the edge of your blade cuts through armor like air and your men are cheering and your eyes sting and triumph cuts into you like a knife even as ‘ _Jedi hunger not for such things_ ’ echoes in your mind.

It’s the moment when you wake up in the night and your stomach lurches and there’s bile in your mouth and you choke out an apology to whoever it was you woke up _this_ time.

Malak beckons and you go and all too soon all your good intentions become sand slipping through your clenched hands.

Revan’s words hypnotize and burrow deep inside you and you look at her like one looks at their god, distant and terrible, admired and despised in equal measure.

“How can I go back?” she asks you, her eyes wide and scared, “after everything we’ve done?” (They say fear leads to the Dark Side, but everyone still manages to be surprised when it’s fear and shame that takes a Jedi there and not anger.)

Ships drift in space, sparking and gleaming like dying stars.

The rain beats on your back like falling artillery shells and the ones who cheered you on not a week earlier scream and die on mines nestled in deadfall and the screaming never stops and oh, how the Force shrieked, rent, _tore_.

The screaming.

The silence.

A nod.

 

It

 

all

 

_crawls_

inside

 

you.

 

You beat down a shade of the past, but this won’t free you from it. It’s not that simple. You know this.


End file.
